Free Lost Causes by Ken McClure

England at the time of the health scheme, hoping to find a connection, see some link, discover some synapse that might trigger the same feeling in him as the one that had made Macmillan uneasy.
    It was impossible not to feel horror at the story of the surgeon, Martin Freeman, dying in the middle of an operation, leaving his junior the nightmare of completing a very far from routine operation. It was easy to understand why it had attracted the attention of the nation’s press at the time, among their number the journalist James Kincaid.
    Freeman’s patient, Greta Marsh, had reportedly gone on to make a good recovery and been able to give a press conference – although heavily bandaged – to assure medical observers of the operation who feared that her sight might have been damaged beyond repair that their fears were groundless. But then all hell had appeared to break loose.
    Kincaid had been murdered in cold blood along with a nurse who was with him at the time; his killers were thought to be members of a powerful drugs gang. The same gang had been blamed for the death of Neil Tolkien, a local GP involved in a drug rehabilitation scheme in the area – Steven smiled wanly at the name, thinking how different the Shire was from the environs of Newcastle in the early nineties. The gang was blamed again for the death of the head of pharmacy of the Northern Health Scheme, Paul Schreiber, along with two male nurses when they had all been caught up in a raid on the hospital pharmacy.
    Steven frowned, not least at the causes of death involved. Kincaid and the nurse, Eve Laing, had been shot, but Tolkien had been injected with bleach. One of the male nurses had been stabbed, and Schreiber and the other male nurse had perished in a lab fire. Kincaid’s editor, a man named Fletcher, had been murdered too but he had been shot in London, supposedly to stop any revelation of Kincaid’s story about the drug barons of the north.
    ‘What drug barons of the north?’ murmured Steven as he failed to find any report of a successful trial and conviction relating to any of the horrors he’d been reading about. Seven murders and not one arrest? If he had been looking for the reason for John Macmillan’s unease, he felt he’d come some way along that road. Why had no one been brought to justice? Surely there would have been a public outcry … but apparently not. When the dust settled, the Northern Health Scheme had just faded away, and John Carlisle’s career had followed suit, along with what the papers had been calling the drugs war. Life had seemingly returned to normal for the good folks of the Newcastle Health Trust area in record time.
    A new Conservative government was returned in ’92, and a new health secretary was appointed. The Northern Health Scheme ‘experiment’ was declared over, and relative calm prevailed for the next five years before the public voted the Tories out and New Labour came to power. Now, after nearly thirteen years, and with an election looming, it looked like time for change again. And this scenario had coincided with the death of two people, maybe three, who had been involved in a health initiative in the early nineties. Coincidence, or was there more to it?
    Steven felt he’d been cooped up in the flat for too long, and sitting in the one position had given him a sore back. The sun was shining so it was easy to give in to the urge to go for a walk by the river. There was a lot to think about, and he hoped the fresh air might clear his head. What he needed was some kind of working hypothesis, but for the moment he felt as if he could have been looking for the unifying theory of the universe; there was always going to be a bit that didn’t quite fit. Macmillan had mooted the idea that John Carlisle might be the key, so he concentrated his thoughts on him.
    Supposing Carlisle had always been the dishonest character he’d recently been shown to be, and supposing he had been involved in something not